Tracey Emin's STONE LOVE to Go on View at Lehmann Maupin, May 5

Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce Stone Love, a solo exhibition of new works by Tracey Emin, CBE, including painting, bronze sculptures, neon, embroidery, and works on paper. Emin's practice is the result of an intense process of self-discovery in which she transforms her profound and personal anecdotes into universal narratives.

The artist will be present for an opening reception at the gallery at 536 West 22nd Street on Thursday, May 5, from 6-8PM.

The title of the exhibition, Stone Love, comes from the first line of David Bowie's song Soul Love, which explores notions of romantic, physical, and familial love. Speaking about this body of work, Emin has said: "[It] is about love and the reflection of love; the desire to melt into the image of someone else, the fantasy of love. There are many different kinds of ways of loving, but as humans we are restricted to the purely physical and never have the confidence to leap into other worlds." As in her other bodies of work, here she explores metaphysical notions of love and seeks to understand different forms of intimacy.

Though Emin has historically been regarded for her use of various media within a conceptual framework, her new body of work represents a pronounced return to painting. A modern day Expressionist continuing in the tradition of painters like Egon Schiele and Francis Bacon, Emin uncovers personal narratives in self-reflective paintings that examine both the emotional and physical states of human relationships. In creating paintings, Emin upholds the timeless legacy of figurative artworks, often modeled on her own body or on historical photographs, while developing a pictorial language and style that distinguishes her within this genre.

Emin views her bronzes as three-dimensional approaches to drawing. In emotionally and physically charged sculptures, the artist often depicts a lone, softly mottled figure. However in Stone Love, Emin also includes a sculpture of a couple as she continues to explore the frontiers of interpersonal relationships. In her neon works, which the artist regards as "missives," she renders wistful phrases in her own handwriting. Emin, also a prolific writer, views the texts she composes for her neons as more akin to drawing, the quality of the line unique to each work. That the phrases are reproduced in Emin's own script lends the work an urgency and sincerity. Together, the paintings, bronze sculptures, neons, embroideries, and works on paper in Stone Love frame Emin as a classical artist on a perennial journey into the self within the context of intimate and personal relationships.

A fully illustrated catalog will be published to coincide with the exhibition.

Tracey Emin's art is one of disclosure, using her life events as inspiration for works ranging from painting, drawing, video, and installation, to photography, needlework, and sculpture. Emin reveals her hopes, humiliations, failures, and successes in candid and, at times, excoriating work that is frequently both tragic and humorous.

Emin's work has an immediacy and often sexually provocative attitude that firmly locates her oeuvre within the tradition of feminist discourse. By re-appropriating conventional handicraft techniques-or "women's work"-for radical intentions, Emin's work resonates with the feminist tenets of the personal as political. In Everyone I've Ever Slept With 1963-95 (1995, destroyed 2004), Emin used the process of appliqué to inscribe the names of lovers, friends, and family within a small tent, into which the viewer had to crawl inside, becoming both voyeur and confidante. Her interest in the work of Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele particularly inform Emin's paintings, monoprints, and drawings, which explore complex personal states and ideas of self-representation through manifestly expressionist styles and themes. She achieved international recognition with such key works as My Bed (1998), for which she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, and is currently on display at Tate Britain alongside works by Francis Bacon.

Emin was born in London in 1963, and studied at Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. She has exhibited extensively internationally, including a two-person exhibition with Egon Schiele at the Leopold Museum, Vienna (2015); and solo exhibitions including Angel Without You, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2013); How It Feels, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2012); She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2012); Love is What You Want, Hayward Gallery, London (2011); and Walking with Tears, Royal Academy of Art, London (2010). In 2008, Emin held her first major retrospective, Tracey Emin 20 Years, at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, which subsequently toured to Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, Malaga (2008) and Kunstmuseum Bern (2009). Previous major shows include This is Another Place, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2002); Ten Years. Tracey Emin, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2002); I Need Art Like I Need God, South London Gallery, London (1997); and Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (1998). She has also participated in a number of major international group exhibitions in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Japan, Australia, the United States, and Chile. In 2007, Emin represented Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale, was made a Royal Academician, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London, a Doctor of Letters from the University of Kent, and Doctor of Philosophy from London Metropolitan University. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Emin a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the visual arts. She lives and works in London.

Founded in 1996 by partners Rachel Lehmann and David Maupin, Lehmann Maupin has fostered the careers of a diverse group of internationally renowned artists, both emerging and established, working in multiple disciplines and across varied media. With three locations-two in New York and one in Hong Kong-the gallery represents artists from the United States, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, and the Middle East. Known for championing artists who create groundbreaking and challenging forms of visual expression, Lehmann Maupin presents work highlighting personal investigations and individual narratives through conceptual approaches that often address such issues as gender, class, religion, history, politics, and globalism.

Current & Upcoming Exhibitions:
Nicholas Hlobo, through April 17, 2016, New York, Chrystie Street
Hernan Bas, Bright Young Thingsthrough April 23, 2016, New York, West 22nd Street
Tracey Emin, I Cried Because I Love You, through May 21, 2016, Hong Kong, Pedder Building
Adriana Varejão, Kindred Spirits, April 21-June 19, 2016, New York, Chrystie Street
Angel Otero, May 26-July 2, 2016, Hong Kong, Pedder Building

For more information on Tracey Emin, visit lehmannmaupin.com.